The father of some family has to decide whether to spend his leisure amusing his children or continuing important political work that he has been doing in some constituency. The children might be amused by some one else, and the constituency might be worked by another candidate, but in number the constituency far outweighs the children, and it is perhaps easier to replace even a father than to find efficient political leaders. Yet ordinary opinion excuses the man for giving up his political work, but will not pardon total neglect of his family. The reason is that towards his own children a father can naturally have an affection that he cannot have toward an electoral district or even a nation: this affection only really lives so far as it displays itself:1 and it is regarded as something in itself valuable. I, of course, do not mean to say that there are no circumstances in which it would be right to ignore family ties. But I do mean to say that the preferential treatment of one's own family is not to be justified by the belief that in this way the greatest quantity of pleasure or goodness will be produced on the whole-in somewhat the same way as in Adam Smith's scheme of things universal selfinterest was held to work to the common good. It wins approval because we can only love a few people, and intense devotion is held better than a weak diffused stream of benevolence. Even in matters of opinion this intensity of feeling is often held to condone positive mistakes; the gross partiality of a mother is often held more estimable than the more reasonable but slightly contemptuous attitude of a reflective uncle. In action certainly similar affection may not only condone mistakes

1 It would, I think, be untrue to say that a father who did nothing for his children still loved them as much as ever.

but positively justify courses of action that, in the ordinary utilitarian theory and in strict application of the axiom of equality, could at best be indifferent. I shall be told that the views here maintained will lead to a justification on sentimental grounds of every kind of folly and unfairness. As to that it is not pretended that warmth of feeling towards A justifies me in the total neglect of all the rest of the world. It is enough that this will confer on benevolence towards A an element of special value that cannot exist in similar conduct towards other people. In the same way, but even more clearly, when I please other people there is something good in me that could not exist if I took the same pleasure myself. Thus, the most various modifications have to be made of what is called the hedonistic calculus. It is true that there are no simple rules of conduct to be discovered in this way: the calculus in itself could not be more difficult. But the aim of ethics is not to simplify conduct but to represent its real complexity. The fault of the hedonistic calculus is that it leaves entirely out of sight certain elements of value. The same fault belongs to all theories which represent the good as something to be produced. The real foundation of ethics is not the existence of things valuable in themselves which can be produced in lumps of various size by wills of accurate adjustment; but the existence of persons capable of valuable activities and especially of right or wrong dispositions towards one another. Ethics has only confused itself by building itself up on the conception of abstract good things to be acquired.

$6. The Value of Imperfection

IN applying earlier results to everyday conditions then, the first striking result is to make clear the abstractions involved even in refined utilitarian systems by their conceptions of a sum of good to be attained to show that this way of talking may easily lead to an utterly inadequate view on right distribution of goods, and that it may also blind us to one very great element of good to be realized in action rather than distributed by it, namely the proper disposition of mind in one person towards others. That a good personality is something more than a subject of enjoyments, or even than a summarized expression for various acts of goodwill in the narrower sense: that its goodness consists largely in its whole attitude towards other persons: these are things difficult to state precisely, because they are at once so simple and so easily overlooked.

But when we are back firmly on earth we shall find other conditions that alter very profoundly the general results obtained. For now we must admit the existence of persons who are not only finite but disharmonious and imperfect who are not omniscient, whose wills are not perfectly expressed in their environment, who even while they determine themselves in certain directions seem bound down to a narrow range of choice. In such beings knowledge is always incomplete and almost always mixed with error. More, they cannot even hope to know everything, and even in theoretic pursuits, they confine themselves to a narrow province. Equally they cannot hope to love everyone: of all the millions of their fellowbeings there are only two or three to whom they can really be devoted. For such creatures is not limitation a real

root of evil? Must not their goodness surely be a determined effort to transcend their limitations?

Now as soon as this thought takes possession of a man in his anxiety to escape from the finite self he often seeks deliverance by the path of knowledge. It was of speculative knowledge that Aristotle was thinking when he bade men as far as in them lay put on immortality even in the surroundings of mortal imperfection. To know, it is held, is to rise above the distorting influence of personal aims and desires. It is the sinking of an individuality that must otherwise always negate perfection. This involves a definite turning away from the ordinary life of men and though this is sometimes called the attuning of the individual will to the universal, it means rather a ceasing to will, a resignation in which there may be peace but there is not true activity. So far as I myself will, I choose definite situations for myself and for such of my fellows as my choice can affect. So far as I resign myself, I accept the situations that some other power, whether it is nature or God, is choosing for me. It is possible to will and at the same time to believe that my will is in harmony with the divine will. This is not resignation. Resignation only begins when I satisfy myself on some ground other than my own desires, that the supreme power in the universe is working in a certain direction, and then either dispose my own will in accordance with that conviction or cease myself to will altogether. To take the initiative myself and at the same time to suppose that in so doing I am resigning myself to another will is a mere delusion: in the end it means that I believe the supreme will to reside in myself either wholly or partially. If you are sure that you are yourself the supreme power in the part of the universe with which

you are concerned there is no great hardship in resigning yourself to the higher power immanent in you. It is when the conviction is borne in on you that the supreme power is neither in harmony with your aims, nor in the least interested by them, that resignation becomes a difficulty; possibly at the same moment it becomes a sin.

But this alleged deliverance of the individual by knowledge and acquiescence is after all incomplete. As we have seen, to know the universal is not to become it : if man ever became really lost in God he would not know God at all. Absolute knowledge does not destroy the individual personality. This ideal of life would end not in freeing the individual from the limitation which makes him an individual, but in marring still further his personality by cutting away all its powers except that of knowledge. At the end of the long process of selfmutilation man could remain himself; his knowledge would still be private to him: and elements in his character that might have been nobler than knowledge would have disappeared.

The proposal to destroy personality because it is imperfect ends then simply in a proposal to make it less perfect still. It is as if a man were to maim himself past recognition in an unsuccessful effort to commit suicide. Therefore, while acknowledging the inherent limitations of human personality, we must rule out from the beginning any ethical suggestions based upon them which could end only in self-contradiction.

Let us rather keep to the ideal of a Society of persons, each possessed of complex powers that he can realize in what we call a personality: and let us see what differences are made in the practical applications of this